musings by michelle

Matt had torn down (and then rebuilt) an old fence in our backyard and so we had a bunch of pickets I could use for this project. I had seen this pin on Pinterest, and thought it could be something that I could DIY. I wanted something fairly large to hang on some empty walls in our basement rec room, so I thought this would be worth a shot, and enlarged some photos from our honeymoon. It turned out to be a pretty easy project, and I did all three for less than $30 since I already had a lot of the materials on hand. Not bad, considering the original pin links to a similar item being sold for $110 each!

The pickets had already been cut to a similar length, thanks to our fence improvement project, so all I had to do was lay them out to form a square and them drill a couple pieces on the back to hold them all together. I varied the cut sides (some are at the top, and others at the bottom.

I screwed them together from the back, so you don’t see them from the front. They are around 30″ square.

Then I added hanging hardware on the back, as well as some adhesive cork (it’s drawer liner) to the bottom corners to save the wall from getting scratched and to provide a bit of grip to keep them steady and even once hung. You could easily use other types of picture/frame stabilizers- I was just using what I had around.

It was Matt’s idea to use upholstery tacks to hold the pictures in place – this way the art can be easily changed out.

I also put some poster board behind these photos to make them pop a bit more.

Here’s a budget breakdown of this project:
Wood – luckily free, we had it around
Screws – we already had these
Hanging hardware – $2
Cork for stabilizing – already had this, too
Poster board – $14! (Note to self, don’t send hubby to the craft store on an errand. He’s not a bargain hunter like me.)
Upholstery tacks – $2
Photo enlargements – $3 each at CostCo = $9
TOTAL: $27

I love the look of the weathered wood. I’m a bit surprised by this, because I typically like really modern-style home furnishings… so this look is something I haven’t done before. The art really fills up this wall, and I love that we can swap out the photos in the future, if we want. What do you think?

Probably the easiest way to “live green” is to re-use things you already own for other purposes. Matt and I have tried to do that from time to time — for example, we re-used the folding side table leaves from a small bistro table to make floating shelves. Just a quick sanding, staining, and using some floating shelf brackets from Home Depot later, here’s a before and after:

But since we live in such a small home (733 square feet), our ability to hold on to things (“just in case”) is limited. So we often have to craigslist items that we no longer use. However, craigslist has also been great for finding used pieces to renovate. When we started to put together our nursery, we decided to get a dresser to use for both storage and a changing table. After stalking craigslist for a solid-wood piece for a while, we found one with a good amount of character for $40. We hoped to stain it, but upon closer inspection, we realized we had purchased a dresser (well, a buffet, really) that was solid wood with a wood veneer. Booo! (Note to Self: always do the close inspection BEFORE buying!) So instead of staining, we decided to paint. I had found some fun dressers on Pinterest that had different colored drawers, so that’s what we went with. So here’s the before and after on the dresser: